


Fire Escape

by kaffyrutsky



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Other, The Time War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-10
Updated: 2007-08-10
Packaged: 2017-10-10 14:41:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/100886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffyrutsky/pseuds/kaffyrutsky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He woke, and the mourning and the evening were his first day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fire Escape

**Author's Note:**

> It is almost impossible for me to imagine what any regeneration must have been like, and beyond impossible to imagine what the Doctor went through upon awakening after the War. This is a very experimental examination, and it may not work - either as style or story - but I suppose I can classify it as the Doctor might; a case of reaching for the light, in an effort to leave darkness.

The light faded, and he woke up.

He closed his eyes, but it was too late to go back. He didn't move, except to look up into the dark. His eyes felt different.

His skin itched. His bones ached and moved beneath it.

He moved his head on his neck, experimentally, to see how it felt. He flexed his fingers, wincing a little as he waited for pain. There was none, so he relaxed. Then he felt the differentness of his fingers, and he couldn't abide it.

He closed his eyes again, and slept.

The light returned, and he woke up.

This time, the light came from walls that surrounded him, not from his own incandescent flesh. He sat up. Then he realized that his legs were longer. He had to stand up; the need was imperative. His new spine jerked, trying to understand its new load.

He pitched and yawed like a masterless ship, until She cried out for him, and he fell against Her wall. Then he rubbed his left forearm with a hand he didn't know, and turned to care for Her.

He circled the rotor console, looking for clues. He found none, and gave up. She cried. He sat on the floor and spoke softly to Her as She regrew. His eyes went wide as the light shifted from gold to green, and the struts rose around him. She was different now.

Everything was different now.

Time passed. He reached for tools, and found them, and helped Her. She mourned inconsolably. The green-gold light grew deeper. He grew tired, but ignored it until his hands began to shake. When that happened, his tools slipped, and he hurt Her. He wept in frustration, and touched Her new places gingerly until he no longer risked injuring Her.

The light faded, and he slept.

He slept several times thereafter, on the floor, curled around a strut. She slept with him. The last time he woke up on the floor, She was singing again in his head. He sighed in relief.

There was still work to do, though, and it was so hard for him to concentrate. He ached. His bones began to crawl again. He realized he was hungry, but thought he might vomit up everything inside him if he ate. He decided against eating, a failsafe of sorts.

He continued to work, and sit, and sleep with Her on the floor of the console room.

Each time he slept, the light faded. Each time he awoke, it blossomed.

He wore himself like an ill-fitting suit of clothes. He refused to wear anything else until he knew himself. After a while, he gave up on that and found She had presented him with something to wear; dark trousers, dark jumper.

He put them on, flinching at the feel of them. His skin still itched and his bones still crawled beneath it.

He touched his head, and missed the curls. Eventually, he liked the rough abbreviation of coarse hair which replaced them.

The light faded and he slept again. When the light grew, he woke up, and his clothing was less uncomfortable.

He waited to hear from Her.

She told him She was well, and he smiled. She told him to move, and the smile faded. There was nowhere else he wanted to go.

Then his muscles played him false. His legs were longer, and he needed to walk. He felt Her approval, and he bit back a curse, but acquiesced. He left the console room, padding forward in his long, bare feet.

For the first time, his legs didn't ache. His back felt right, his arms seemed to be the correct length. The clothing didn't catch at him. He fell into a newly-broad stride and walked the halls.

They grew in front of him.

They stretched, and turned, and curved. They led to stairs, and to descending tunnels, to catwalks, and paving stone pathways, and, occasionally, dirt trails. He followed them all, and listened to Her singing in his head with something approaching fragile pleasure.

She showed him rooms, most of which he remembered. He saw his own suite of rooms, and acknowledged them without stopping. He saw the library, and smiled. He saw the kitchen, and felt his hunger return without nausea, so he turned aside and made himself some tea and toast.

He chewed the toast and swallowed it, following each bite with a sip of hot, sweet tea. He had put sugar in his tea for the first time. When he was satisfied, he put the dishes in a sink and returned to the halls.

The next time She sent a note of inquiry to him, he spoke to Her aloud. His voice surprised him. It was sharp and deep, harder than before, with an edgy lilt that reminded him of sprawling iron mills and brown-green moorland.

She showed him cities and moorland, and blue ocean, blue sky, white snow, green rivers, colourful gardens and golden sunlight.

He ignored the pictures, and shook Her off. He had other places to go. She eventually gave in, and he walked the halls some more.

Light faded, and he threw himself to the floor of a hall, sleeping there. When the light returned, he stood up and began walking again, falling into a rhythm that blocked conscious thought. He found a pair of sturdy black shoes placed against a closed door, together with thick socks. He put them on.

He kept on walking. This time, when the light faded, he found his way in the dark.

Pictures of his own began to flash in his head. Red skies, rocky iron deserts, jagged and unforgiving mountains. His pace quickened. He saw a domed city in his head. He started to run. She gave him more hallway, as much as She could find in Herself.

He ran until he was out of breath, his hearts pounding, his cool skin flushed with exertion. He ran, occasionally losing his balance now, and ran some more. He sobbed as he ran. He was trying to find his way home.

She grew angry, and threw a picture at him; flame from horizon to horizon, red sky and red desert swallowed by it.

He gasped, and staggered. He fell to his knees and tried to burst into flame, then wrapped his arms around himself to keep from bursting into flame. He keened and howled, without words. She raged and howled with him.

When he had no breath left for crying, they both grew silent. He rested his head against Her, and She rested in him.

He closed his eyes and they slept. The light faded.

When he awoke, the light returned. He thought of blue skies and ocean, of cities open to the sky and brown-green moorland. She queried, gently. He answered by sitting, then standing, then turning away from the hall that stretched before him into grey limbo.

When he got back to the console room, the rotor was humming, and he found a black leather coat neatly draped over a railing. He put it on.

It was time to go.

-30-


End file.
